- A Question of Trust
- Intro: The Birth of a Blog
- You and Me Could Write a Bad Romance: Part I
- Bad Romance, Part II: The Couch
- Bastard Package #1
- Hallelujah
- Born This Way
- Baby Girl X
- Another Victim of Love
- True Life
- The Girls Who Went Away
- Love and Other Drugs
- 11 Things Adoptees Love to Hear
- Uh, Never Mind
- Adoptee Kid Lit
- Bastard Princess and the Search for the Holy Grail
- MYOFB
- Awkwardness
- Baby Steps
- Faith, Hope, and Catholic Charities
- Special Delivery
- Green-eyed Monster
- !@#$
- Pandora
- Fantasyland
- Adoptees You May Have Heard Of
- Big MAC Attack
- Material Girl
- VISA and Mastercard Accepted
- Don't Hold Your Breath
- Our Love is Like a Constipated Cat
- A Question of Trust
- Adoption, Hollywood Style
- All in the Family
True Life
Watching some MTV show in the hotel room while Jeremy’s at his conference, since the Palm Springs bike rental place hasn’t returned my call yet and I have nothing else to do. I don’t normally watch MTV, but this show caught my eye for obvious reasons. It’s called True Life: I’m Passing as Someone I’m Not. It appears to be about teens who are lying to the world about who they are in order to hide a secret. The first segment features a gorgeous transgender Asian girl. The second is about a mixed-race girl—half white, half black—who pretends to be Costa Rican because she prefers that exotic fiction to the truth. She’s got the denial tapdance down pat—even when her friends call her bluff. “Eventually, I’m gonna get caught,” she admits to the camera. The girls’ denial makes me sad, mostly because I know that the show could just as easily be about me and my own lifelong lies. I haven’t yet reconciled myself with everyone in my line of fire.
As the show progresses, both women eventually come to terms with who they are, bravely fessing up to their friends and potential partners. The mixed-race girl, Dani, meets her imprisoned father’s (whom she’s never met) family for the first time and feels an emotional shift, maybe a sense of belonging. She decides to tell her friends the truth. Her girlfriends are shocked by the fairly minor revelation but shrug it off; their love for their friend is unchanged. The transgender girl’s situation is different; her potential suitor is appropriately stunned and very respectfully declines further pursuit of the relationship. Both girls are accepted for who they really are—and along the way, one of them receives the support of the people they were afraid of losing. In the end, however, they both gained something even more important—self respect and acceptance of who they really are. For both of them--all three of us, really--it’s just one stop along a lifelong journey to becoming an authentic person.
As the show progresses, both women eventually come to terms with who they are, bravely fessing up to their friends and potential partners. The mixed-race girl, Dani, meets her imprisoned father’s (whom she’s never met) family for the first time and feels an emotional shift, maybe a sense of belonging. She decides to tell her friends the truth. Her girlfriends are shocked by the fairly minor revelation but shrug it off; their love for their friend is unchanged. The transgender girl’s situation is different; her potential suitor is appropriately stunned and very respectfully declines further pursuit of the relationship. Both girls are accepted for who they really are—and along the way, one of them receives the support of the people they were afraid of losing. In the end, however, they both gained something even more important—self respect and acceptance of who they really are. For both of them--all three of us, really--it’s just one stop along a lifelong journey to becoming an authentic person.